La-La Land to release 15-disc original series score set

Music was recorded for that episode and yes, we have it. Some of the music was recorded on set though and that we don't have. You'll have to get your clean bill of health from Dr. McCoy elsewhere.
One quick Charlie X bit is in the episode (when Adam samples Spock's Vulcan harp) but otherwise it's all new.

This is gonna be one sweet release I just hope it is not wicked expensive

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Price was just announced on FB: $225 dollars and a november release. Limited to 6000 copies.

I knew this was going to be expensive, but I won't be buying. The collector in me wants this. But I don't really love the music of TOS the way I love the music of TNG. This is a fantastic release and well worth the price for fans. Just not for me.

This is gonna be one sweet release I just hope it is not wicked expensive

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Price was just announced on FB: $225 dollars and a november release. Limited to 6000 copies.

I knew this was going to be expensive, but I won't be buying. The collector in me wants this. But I don't really love the music of TOS the way I love the music of TNG. This is a fantastic release and well worth the price for fans. Just not for me.

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Completely opposite for me. For my tastes even TNG's best efforts are soulless noise compared to TOS' music.

Music was recorded for that episode and yes, we have it. Some of the music was recorded on set though and that we don't have. You'll have to get your clean bill of health from Dr. McCoy elsewhere.

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I'm not sure how to read this. Does that mean Adam's songs won't be part of the release? What exactly was recorded "on set"? I'm confused.

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I think:

You'll have to get your clean bill of health from Dr. McCoy elsewhere.

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...could be a direct reference to on-set songs (meant to be Adam improvising) which were not recorded seperately in the studio, so the track is not isolated from the rest of the dialogue. I'm not sure if this also refers to the "judge/jail" song Adam sings to mock Kirk in a corridor, but if i'm correct, then such songs would not be included in the box set. As much as I would like the improvised songs to be a part of the package, I can weather it, considering the sheer volume of the rest of the set.

Just to think about this release makes the mind swim with menories and expectations.

Price was just announced on FB: $225 dollars and a november release. Limited to 6000 copies.

I knew this was going to be expensive, but I won't be buying. The collector in me wants this. But I don't really love the music of TOS the way I love the music of TNG. This is a fantastic release and well worth the price for fans. Just not for me.

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Completely opposite for me. For my tastes even TNG's best efforts are soulless noise compared to TOS' music.

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i think a lot of people will agree with you. I do too, in part. The Next Generation had more atmospheric music, TOS had a rich, melodic orchestral score.

But do not underestimate the nostalgia factor. You might've grown up with TOS and love the show partly because of the music. I'm an eighties child, grew up with TNG and love the scores, especially by Ron Jones. I grew up listening to it. I don't hold that love for TOS. I respect the show, enjoy it, but don't love it. Same with the music. Technically and creatively it is better than TNG. But I just don't love it.

Music was recorded for that episode and yes, we have it. Some of the music was recorded on set though and that we don't have. You'll have to get your clean bill of health from Dr. McCoy elsewhere.

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I'm not sure how to read this. Does that mean Adam's songs won't be part of the release? What exactly was recorded "on set"? I'm confused.

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I have that old bootleg Star Trek Bloopers album made from discarded audio reels from the third season (I bought it before I knew it was bootleg or understood the concept, honest), and that includes audio of the songs from "The Way to Eden," which was informative about the process. Normally for songs in TV shows (this being no exception), the performers initially do them in a recording studio for optimal sound quality; then when they actually perform the song for the camera, the pre-recorded audio is played back on set and the performers sing along for lip sync. So on the bootleg album you can hear the recording that was actually done on the set, with the live performers singing along with the pre-recorded audio, so you hear their voices doubled over. Then, of course, in the final episode, only the prerecorded, best-quality audio track from the recording studio is used, dubbed over the visuals filmed on the set. (This is why you often see subtle lip-sync errors even when it's definitely the voice of the person you see singing.)

Presumably what's on this album will be the songs as recorded in the sound studio. What isn't on the album would be the little bits that weren't prerecorded, like Adam's "clean bill of health" ad-lib. If they were recorded on set, they'd basically count as part of the dialogue rather than the soundtrack.

Indysolo, can you tell us the music and lyric credits for the "Way to Eden" songs? I've been wondering that for ages.

Ah, thanks for the clarifications. So, in other words, "The Goodland", "Heading Out to Eden", "Hey Out There!" and the Spock/Adam jam will be part of this release, right? They sure sound pre-recorded to me.

I hope me constantly asking for these songs doesn't annoy anyone. It's just that they are a really big selling point for me, when it comes to this set.

I hope me constantly asking for these songs doesn't annoy anyone. It's just that they are a really big selling point for me, when it comes to this set.

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Interesting. Personally, the music from Way To Eden would be about the 15th- or 20th-ranked selling point of the set, for me. I do like some stuff from Way To Eden: I like Adam's song "Headin' Out To Eden" (the slow version), and of course the jam. I like those things a lot.

But there are for more interesting things, in a potential full-TOS collection. I'm much more interested in the original score for Enemy Within, and Adonis, and Friday's Child. Much more interested in the full score for the 2nd pilot. Very interested in remastered scores for Amok Time and Doomsday Machine. A full Charlie X! That's a helluva score, full of music that was used thruout season 1, and library cues for later seasons. Etc.

For me, the answer on the Way To Eden music is most interesting because of what it says about the "thoroughness" of the research etc behind this compilation. Before now there was some confusion about the music in the episode, with some sources saying no new music was recorded, and other sources disagreeing. If the guys behind the compilation went to the trouble of resolving the questions for this crappy 3rd-season episode, which is one of the most-reviled (though in fact I like the episode), then to me that speaks volumes on how comprehensive this collection is.

Very excited. It's been almost 48 hours since I first learned about the compilation, and I'm still very excited.

Previous releases or re-recordings were nice, but they were also frustrating in a tantalizing way because of what you didn't get.

A complete compilation for the entire series is mind-boggling and something to be really appreciated.

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Wholeheartedly agree. Being a fan of the music as much as the story content and classic visual, the music is another "character" in the series--memorable all on its own. Like many, I bought the GNPC albums and the VS re-scored records back in the 80s, but as much as I appreciated having any TOS music released, one could not help thinking of the volume of remaining music sitting in an archive.

Now, that longtime frustration is pushed aside as one of the most exiciting soundtrack releases in 50 years is on the eve of release.

It just occurred to me that it would be great if La La Land could do a box set of scores from Mission: Impossible too -- the original series, of course. There is one CD available, but it's all Lalo Schifrin and mainly from later seasons, it looks like. I think M:I had its best music in the first 4 seasons, and featured some great contributions by Gerald Fried, Jerry Fielding, Walter Scharf (who's best known for composing the National Geographic theme), Robert Drasnin, and others as well as Schifrin. I know M:I isn't as popular today as Star Trek, but the Fried and Fielding scores would have crossover appeal for Trek music fans -- and I submit the rest of the early scores would too, since this was also a Desilu production made simultaneously with TOS and probably used the same recording studio and equipment and a lot of the same musicians and instruments, giving the scores a similar sound even with different composers. And I'd certainly be interested in such a set.

It strikes me that, you guys who did the research for the new compilation, you probably have more access to cue sheets for tracked episodes than anyone has ever had. Can this info be made public somewhere? It would be wonderful to be able to look up info like –

Well for example, a question came up in another thread, about the music cues during the teaser of Errand Of Mercy, about a minute or so in, when the torpedo-strikes rock the ship and Kirk & Spock are clinging to the handrail. An online directory of cue sheets would be awesome. Probably a tedious thing to put together; but if you guys have access to all the info, that would be a nice follow-on project, after the compilation is released.

There's one issue in particular I'm still wondering about. According to my father, his former teacher, the late composer Scott Huston, ghostwrote the scores for a couple of TOS episodes. There was a Cincinnati Enquirer interview with Huston sometime in the '80s, before his death, that also asserted this, clarifying that they were scores credited to Alexander Courage and were written in 1968 when Courage was on an "extended European vacation." I later learned that Courage had something of a falling out with Roddenberry over the latter's insistence on adding lyrics to the theme song so that he could get half the royalties on sheet-music sales, or something like that, which makes it credible that he could've asked someone else to ghostwrite the scores. And the two original third-season scores credited to Courage, "The Enterprise Incident" and "Plato's Stepchildren," use Courage motifs but do not sound like the work of the same composer who did the pilots, "The Man Trap," and "The Naked Time," although they're definitely by the same composer as each other.

I asked Jeff Bond about this over e-mail some years ago, but he said he'd been unable to find any proof of this. I'm wondering if anything more has been discovered about the authorship of those episode scores in the course of researching this project. I keep thinking I should look into it myself, maybe try to get in contact with Huston's estate through the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music, where he taught for many years (and which was also the alma mater of TOS composer George Duning). But I'm just about to get to work on a new novel and I don't think I'll have the chance to research it anytime soon. Really, I should've done it years ago.

It has been pointed out by Jeff Bond on FSM that the music for The Enterprise Incident sounds similar to some Alexander Courage music from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

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[FONT=Arial]There's a section of "Enterprise Incident" that even sounds like some of Courage's writing for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (he'd done an episode the previous year)--almost a riff on Goldsmith's Voyage theme, which Courage adapted in a few Voyage episodes. Obviously unintentional but I wonder if all these sci fi shows were blending together for Courage by then.[/FONT]

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[FONT=Arial]I haven't heard the music in question, but this sort of suggests that this isn't the case.[/FONT]

That is facinating. Has an air of plausibility too: those two scores don't sound like Courage's other Star Trek music.

I had never heard of Scott Huston before.

The one thing that makes me skeptical is, I think the composer conducted the studio orchestra in the recording of the score. Jeff Bond's book has the session dates for those scores as 8/5/68 and 10/25/68. Wouldn't people have noticed if the guy in the room wasn't Courage? In Bob Justman's interview in the book, he said he likes to be on the sound stage for the recording of the score, and he knew "Sandy".

(On the other hand, those dates are right on Huston's timeline, and in the interview Justman says they could only get Courage for a couple of first-season scores. Hmm.)